Introduction

I've been thinking recently about a broad category of question edits that I often make. I'm interested in how some kinds of chatty (and excisable) material inadvertently create a psychological power imbalance between the question author and readers, and how that impacts on people's willingness to help.

I have a theory that new users are cautious askers at the best of times, when asking a question on Reddit and the like. On Stack Overflow, our reputation precedes us: they've heard we're a grumpy bunch of elitists, or that our writing and formatting requirements have gotten too onerous, or that they're going to be tarred and feathered for whatever terrible question they wish to ask.

As a result, the question author tries to head this off at the pass, and ends up adding so much nervous boilerplate that their question gets an even worse reception. It is added to placate the audience, and ends up annoying the audience instead.

Consider these phrases, which are generally conversational, and added (unnecessarily) for the sake of politeness:

Good day

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Please help me

Thanks in advance

We sometimes get statements of suffering and woe that might be (subconsciously) employed to encourage readers to take pity on them:

I am stuck for days

I am tearing my hair out

I am new to this

I have googled and read every single post on stackoverflow

This will be easy for you

Please be patient with me

Please do not downvote!

Sorry for a stupid question / my poor English

It doesn't work :_o(

Some of this material, at least for native English speakers, veers into quite obsequious and irritating territory:

Dear experts

Friends, I need your kind and generous help to fix a problem

Awaiting your valuable replies dears

You're my only hope

Please help me please. Please, I really need this. I am desperate.

If my question was merely "what do we do about this", then the answer ought to be that editors can trim out the fluff. However, I'd like to consider rather broader themes here.

Theory

I am pondering whether this sort of fluff is counterproductive not just because it is chatty (it is) and not just because it is not technical writing (also true), but because it has the effect of elevating readers to exalted "expert" status, while the question author insists on grovelling around in the dust, seeking pity and condescension. This power imbalance is liable not only to create a poor reception for individual questions of this type, but makes answering questions tedious in general. It is exhausting to be placed on a pedestal, and then to interact with forelock-tuggers all day: as humans, we crave conversations with people we see as equals.

For askers, is there a way we can educate them about the counterproductive effect of this material?

I observe that our efforts to educate authors about chat and waffle is a Sisyphean battle, but perhaps question authors do not care much about it because they don't think their chatty material disadvantages them. I think it does hurt them, and perhaps to a degree that we've not previously considered, for the reasons I am outlining here.

Oddly, I think this phenomenon happens day in and day out, but it has become normalised to old-timers. Perhaps we've liked the limelight we have been awarded - there are some nice aspects to being regarded as an expert, after all. We might also have regarded question writer's politenesses and pleadings as a property of nature, and essentially unchangeable.

Cultural influences

To complicate this picture, some of the interpretations of these phraseologies may be flawed because there is a cultural gap between the asker and the reader. One geography that attracts a large number of new Stack Overflow posters seems to me to normalise exceedingly earnest and flowery civilities. Some posters from that region inherit a hierarchical view of society and their lowly place within it, and they are happy to see themselves as "juniors" and "just beginners", way below the "experts", "superiors" and "sirs" they are addressing.

My point here is not to correct regional variations of English, but to note that a meaning understood is not necessarily the same as a meaning intended. Thus, if there are cultures for whom flowery language appears to be irritating fawning, then that is the interpretation that will probably hold, even if it was normal for the speaker.

Interestingly, I had just such a user the other day, who I had helped by removing swathes of really egregious pleading. They were so attached to their "politeness" they edited it all back in, and they struck me as a perfect example of a writer who has no idea of the perception they are creating for themselves. Not only are they likely to be perceived by readers as a "beggar", but they seemed to me to be insisting on their own helplessness, which is hardly a trait we should be encouraging in engineers.

Questions

Since we like discussions to have some focus, I am interested in these thoughts:

I think it is absolutely possible for total beginners to express themselves confidently. Indeed, experts in Java generally have no problem asking a succinct beginner question about, say, a functional language. How can we encourage this "asking confidence"?

Cultural influences aside, is my desire for confident questions hampered by the limited command of English of some question authors? Or, is it merely an attitude that can be encouraged and changed?

Would an addition to the Help Centre be useful? I think this collection of guidelines is actually very good, but it suffers from being quite large, and it is doubtful that the members I most want to reach would read any of it anyway.

The psychology of asking (or begging) for favours on the internet seems to be so intrinsic to the volunteer model we rely upon, I wonder if any academic research has been done on this? Has Stack Exchange done any? Some input from suitably qualified people would be useful.

I have in the past supported more instances of automatic question scanning, to help writers avoid phrases that cause these problems (most recently here). I don't think this needs to be particularly complicated, a few regexs might do the trick. Again, I wave a small flag for this (and I hope that the successor project to "question templates" might contain something of this kind).

The original motivation for writing this question was to facilitate a change in questions and their authors. However, having received some excellent comments below, it should be noted that if a reader loses patience with a question they deem to be excessively deferential or irritating, perhaps they should be the one to adjust their interpretation or approach?

For example, we could try to educate readers about different cultural writing styles, and that a person appearing to be begging is in fact just being polite (even though the chatty material will be trimmed anyway). If Meta readers are interested in tackling the phenomenon at this end, then suggestions about how to do that are very much in scope.

If indeed the reader's experience of ingratiation is culturally dependent, I would be most interested in any guesstimations as to what proportion of question readings might be affected by it (nearly none? half? most questions from new users?)

So the issue here is that, for most users, and particularly users not asking good questions, SO struggles to get them to read anything about how to ask a question appropriately. While it would certainly be great if these users read a paragraph on why they should minimize or eliminate pleasantries and pleading from their question, it's even more important to just get them to realize that their question needs to be on topic, well researched, contain enough information to be answerable, be clear, etc.
– ServyApr 19 '18 at 18:26

3

I agree @Servy. However, I see my theme as a parallel task, given that the education I am looking for (confidence) is never-ending, just as yours is (asking answerable questions). My theory is that good questions can be hampered by waffle reflecting a lack of confidence, and that encouraging a positive mental attitude in posters would improve this. So, although my question here is indeed about getting new users to read stuff (hard, I know), I am also trying to illuminate a potential cause of poor reception (and, perhaps, why old hands become jaded or burnt out).
– halferApr 19 '18 at 18:33

7

But if the people that need to read this information never read it, you haven't actually fixed anything. Additionally, in those rare cases where you do get someone to read anything about how they should ask a question, you tend to get very little before they move on, so it's important that the information presented to new askers is as brief as possible (with additional information being available) and be as important as possible. While I do think these changes to questions help, and help a fair bit, I don't think they're important enough to fit onto the "how to ask" page, for example.
– ServyApr 19 '18 at 18:36

5

Indeed, I am wondering if we have a feedback loop between beginners who are becoming increasingly shrill and needy as a response to the harsh treatment they expect to receive on the main site. Then, helpers get more irritated by being fawned upon, and the tone worsens slowly over time. So, while I appreciate this is a broad topic, it connects to the Be Nice discussion a fair bit.
– halferApr 19 '18 at 18:42

1

Last thing you want is a global flip to the opposite: those arrogant askers who presume rather than assume, demand instead of ask, and generally act as if they are doing you a favor by allowing you show off just how smart you think you are. "I have you know I made millions with my apps." Yeah? Then hire a private tutor instead of buddering us.
– usr2564301Apr 19 '18 at 18:58

3

I think this discussion should not be only about asking less fluffy questions but also about how these fluffy questions are being treated. I think that can also be improved a lot.
– André KoolApr 19 '18 at 19:05

2

(Related: wasn't there a guy just the other week who got absolutely livid about "strangers" deleting his Obligatory Self-Deprecating Praise-be-upon-Thou fluff over and over again?)
– usr2564301Apr 19 '18 at 19:08

1

And yes I think limited command of english can really unfluance the quality of question. Not because of the bad english per se but more because of the inability to express themselfs and their goals. (I even have troubles with it myself sometimes, like in this comment)
– André KoolApr 19 '18 at 19:09

1

Fair enough @Knox. I don't mind them on their own, since as I say, they can be useful. However, if they are used to reinforce other chatty material (I am a newbie in java script. don't downvote without commenting. i have googled all day. pls halp me pls!) then it is likely to be irritatating.
– halferApr 19 '18 at 20:04

On "Theory": As far as my own experience as an answer writer goes, deferential language doesn't really affect my reaction to a question. If it gets so over the top it makes the question hard to read, I'll edit it away, but that's it. I don't feel like I'm being elevated to an exalted status, or anything like that. Maybe it has something to do with me being Brazilian (a higher-context culture), but I'm not even sure how much these cultural differences matter here. (As you say, non-anecdotal evidence on that would be useful.)
– duplodeApr 19 '18 at 22:13

4

"I have googled and read every single post on stackoverflow" - that's some solid research right there.
– Mark AmeryApr 20 '18 at 13:51

3

@Mark: a suitable addendum would be "I have researched my problem for 4.5 years". I dread to think how long it would take for authors who swear they've "read everything on google".
– halferApr 20 '18 at 13:53

5

Things like "I am stuck for days" and "I am tearing my hair out" seem over-the-top until you realize that there are several answers, some from staff, that reiterate that asking on Stack Overflow should be an absolute last resort. Then, all of a sudden, they make total sense, and you learn to empathize. (You would, of course, still edit those out because if Stack Overflow is to be used as a last resort, it's probably implied that you're at your wits' end, you have deadlines to meet, and/or your livelihood may be in jeopardy. But hopefully you still learn to empathize while doing so.)
– BoltClock♦Apr 21 '18 at 13:51

3

I hope at least for Luciano's sake that it's not you but the rest of meta that's making them regret commenting on here (because meta can be pretty ruthless when it comes to telling the truth like it is). Otherwise... way to scare them off with your calm, collected and well-intentioned responses, @halfer.
– BoltClock♦Apr 23 '18 at 1:50

7 Answers
7

In Clippy's voice:

voo-oop, I see you [are new] | [have a terrible track record of asking questions], would you like to see some suggestions for newcomers?

Suggestions for newcomers section:

This site is not some forum which takes ages to respond so stay active.

Everyone's time is valuable so do not make people pull teeth to get information from you.

Everyone is a volunteer so do not demand answers but do slam your fists on your desk and demand pictures of Spider-Man.

Before asking:

Google your general problem and see if there are solutions that you can try

If you have an error message or number then that is usually a great start for Google

Keep track of the solutions you tried and why they failed

Asking:

Try to provide the minimal code necessary to reproduce your problem and make sure the problem exists in the minimal code provided. People will ask for more code if need be.

After asking:

Make sure to do absolutely nothing but watch your question for the next 10 minutes and promptly answer any questions which will inevitably arise. This site receives x number of questions per minute for your [most-popular-tag] tag so your question can quickly be ignored and lost.

If asked for debugging information, edit it into the question; do not comment!

If asked for debugging information then provide it immediately or provide a comment stating that you will have it in x number of minutes.

I'll reply to this tomorrow, but for now, you don't need to speak C3PO's language. He speaks six million languages fluently, so he can definitely speak yours.
– halferApr 19 '18 at 20:06

Certainly, having a Clippy device or something similar (while posting questions) would provide more of a hand-holding experience for nervous askers. I think your newcomers material is very good (and I assume you are proposing that it would go into the Help Centre, linked from Clippy) though I wonder if some of that material would be in the docs already? I'm sure the "do your research" is in there now, as is the MCVE advice.
– halferApr 20 '18 at 9:29

In relation to teaching question authors to ask confidently, do you see that as a UI problem? i.e. get Clippy in front of them to scan for pleading, or are there other solutions? Indeed, the premise of the question is open to critique as well - how much this phenomenon affects (or does not affect) user demeanour across the whole membership is a worthwhile consideration also.
– halferApr 20 '18 at 9:34

7

"Everyone is a volunteer so do not demand answers but do slam your fists and demand pictures of Spider-Man." - I'm reasonably up on my memes, but I have no idea what this is referencing. Certainly doesn't belong in the help section.
– Mark AmeryApr 20 '18 at 13:54

4

"Google your error message and try a few solutions" - this only makes sense if the question is a debugging question. Not all questions are debugging questions. None of the top 50 most-upvoted questions on the site are debugging questions. We should not be writing help aimed at new users that presumes that the only valid kind of questions are debugging questions.
– Mark AmeryApr 20 '18 at 13:57

6

"Try to provide the minimal code... People will ask for more code if need be.", "promptly answer any questions which will inevitably arise" - this is defeatist and wrongly gives users the message that it's okay to write a poorly-specified question and then clean it up later. It's not at all inevitable that a question will require further clarification from the author and we shouldn't let them off the hook by suggesting that it is.
– Mark AmeryApr 20 '18 at 14:01

@MarkAmery true if we say "error message", but googling your general problem is always recommended. 99% of the time the answer to a given question already exists (albeit in a form the OP unfortunately rarely understands since it doesn't address their exact code). Perhaps that pharse just needs to be reworded
– BradleyDotNETApr 20 '18 at 14:52

2

"do slam your fists on your desk and demand pictures of Spider-Man." Disregarding what Mark said, I upvoted specifically for this line. For everyone who is like Mark, it references J. Jonah Jameson, aka the publisher/editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugel where Peter Parker works.
– Sudsy1002Apr 20 '18 at 20:19

Meta questions/answers like this containing information on what not to do are (unfortunately) not well received by the powers that be. A very useful similar post with many, many upvotes over at stackexchange.com was completely wiped out (I couldn't find the ID of the deleted question, but I may find it later).
– Peter MortensenApr 20 '18 at 21:37

Growing up in a very polite and gentle family, I found it natural to preface questions in class with, "May I ask a question?". Some teachers would respond, "Yes, and you've just asked it." I felt embarrassed; why did they have to be so rude? Why couldn't they just say yes and let me ask my brilliant question? Slowly I realized my teachers were showing me that I was the one wasting time -- I should just ask my question.

My early confusion came from a conflict in cultures perhaps not dissimilar to they one some new-flowers face when asking questions to us overflowers. But I believe we tend to learn to adapt to the culture that we are in. So let's try to welcome / acculturate new-flowers by trying to be respectful and patient while showing by example how people are expected to behave on Stack Overflow.

Instead of telling people not to apologize, beg or be excessively deferential, let's simply edit it out. If we show what a good question looks like and if we can give a good answer, they will hopefully see the merit of our way and eventually learn how to ask good questions on their own (and, hopefully, contribute good answers too).

You seem to be looking for a way to change peoples' behavior (either the askers' or the answers' or maybe both). I'm of the opinion that telling people what to do (e.g. through pop-ups) is generally not an effective way to change behavior. (The help links have lots of useful information on how to ask a good question that is ignored by thousands every day :)).

This podcast describes some research you may find interesting. It suggests that while telling people what to do is ineffective, instead changing their perception of cultural norms can be effective. I believe, applied here, that means the best we can do is lead by example. Do the hard work of editing out blather one question at a time, showing through action the social norms which are expected.

Babies and animals are quite good at picking up on tacit patterns of behavior. I have hope we adults haven't lost this ability either, and with a little time on the site most will come to understand we want clear, concise, answerable questions without the blather. For those who need a bit more concrete explanation, I hope a link to this meta question would suffice.

Here is an attempt at quantifying the effect of using the word "downvote" in a Stack Overflow question. (I'm using the presence of the string "downvote" as an indicator for questions that are likely to contain some variation on the phrase "Please don't downvote me".) This SEDE query finds the average score received by first-time question askers if their question body contains the string "downvote":

SELECT sum(p.Score) as total, count(p.Score) as num_questions, (sum(p.Score)*1.0)/count(p.Score) as ave
FROM POSTS p
LEFT JOIN USERS u
ON p.OwnerUserId = u.Id
LEFT JOIN (
SELECT u.Id as u_id, min(p.ID) as min_pid
FROM POSTS p
LEFT JOIN USERS u
ON p.OwnerUserId = u.Id
GROUP BY u.Id) as mp
ON mp.u_id = u.Id AND mp.min_pid = p.Id
WHERE p.PostTypeId = 1 AND p.Body LIKE '%downvote%' AND p.Id > ##cutoff:int##

By varying the cutoff parameter, we can see how the average score changes over time. (By decreasing cutoff, more posts are included in the query and since the post Ids are assigned in increasing order, a low cutoff value corresponds to a SEDE query which includes older questions.) The cutoff was also necessary since without the cutoff the SEDE query times-out -- the query takes too much time to run on the full database.

Since the maximum Post.Id is currently 50083751, we can compute the number of posts searched in the query by defining last n posts = 50083751 - cutoff.

And here is a graph of the average score versus last n posts segregated by the presence of the word "downvote":

This seems to show that including the word "downvote" in a question earns the asker about -0.9 votes initially, and their question might be worth about +0.6 more votes (=0.4317+0.1765) in the long run if the word "downvote" were removed.

I don't think the approach described herein is a bad one, but it strikes me as not particularly different from where we are now. We already trim out deferential material (but because it is fluff, rather than for any other reason). I am not all that convinced that unless we spell it out for new authors, they will realise the point of removing politenesses and pleadings, and even if their new questions are less fluffy, remnants of a lack of confidence will remain.
– halferApr 23 '18 at 8:22

1

I agree with asking helpers to be respectful and patient but that's just a restatement of Be Nice, and without a specific proposal of action, I don't know whether we'd be making a measurable change.
– halferApr 23 '18 at 8:23

As an example of a specific action: if we were minded to re-educate answer authors, we could use random pop-ups (even with experienced users) that give useful tips (e.g. "Language that appears to be deferential may just be culturally normal for that writer, and they are not necessarily pleading for help"). However, I don't know if old users would take well to that, or indeed if "old dogs can be taught new tricks".
– halferApr 23 '18 at 8:26

Thanks for the addendum. I don't have strong views on the pop-up idea, just tossing out a few half-baked proposals to stimulate general discussion on my theme. Yes, I'd like to change user's behaviour, but only if there is agreement that this phenomenon affects a non-trivial proportion of readers. It occurs to me, having read the answers thus far given, that such data/research would probably be the next necessary step.
– halferApr 26 '18 at 12:30

Regarding the presence of the word 'downvote', I often search for this phrase in order to take it out. It is a good indicator of poor quality writing generally, and meta advice is discouraged in posts anyway, since it is not of interest to most readers, who do not even sign in to vote. I like the graph though - to me they indicate that readers were sufficiently irritated by the disclaimer that they disregarded the advice!
– halferApr 29 '18 at 20:00

What a very interesting graph. How does this take into account deleted questions? Otherwise that could be the explanation of the increase in score over time. ie. Low scored questions get deleted, and aren't taken into account when calculating the average.
– LuuklagNov 8 '18 at 14:50

@Luuklag: The SEDE query posted above includes deleted questions. If deleted questions were omitted, the query would look like this.
– unutbuNov 8 '18 at 16:37

One could maybe investigate how long it takes before people learn to post questions without fluff if the fluff is just edited out without any additional comment every time. If someone is not new anymore and still inserts unhelpful stuff I would probably consider not editing it anymore and just downvote.
– TrilarionDec 7 '19 at 18:22

@Trilarion: there are some folks on SO who are pretty determined to add fluff, and the single downvote we can knowingly make on their account often makes no difference at all. It used to be something one could flag mods for, but there has been a perceptible shift in policy over the last couple of years, which unfortunately allows greater license for "personal style". And of course we're in a worse situation now, since the mod exodus has caused the workload to pile up for the mods left behind (thus "fluff flags" would probably be even less welcome).
– halferDec 7 '19 at 21:21

1

@halfer okay, in this case I still downvote and simply move on. Cleaning up after people who don't care is not something I want to do really.
– TrilarionDec 7 '19 at 21:25

While this phenomenon certainly exists, I don't think it is unique to SO and I don't think some elitism reputation has much to do with it.

As you observe, there's a lot of cultural aspects here and that's probably one of the main reasons. Strange translations to English is another.

Also, a whole lot of people asking are students, who may be used to address their teacher in a certain way, often respectfully. Then they address the SO community as they would address their teacher. And how they do that can in turn can also be a cultural thing. There's for example the incredibly common "I have a doubt" almost exclusively coming from Indian students (see this), which sounds strange to others but simply means "I have a question".

Fair enough. The psychological drivers for deferential language may not exclusively be the elitist perception of Stack Overflow (and I'd say that part of my theory is not terribly important). I am contesting that deferential language is very common on the main site, and that this betrays a lack of confidence on the part of the asker, and ultimately stimulates a response of resentfulness on the part of answerers (possibly leading to tension and long-term burn-out). I am pondering how we could measure this, and what both sides could do to reduce its ill effects, if any.
– halferApr 20 '18 at 14:34

However, I think you are saying in your answer that the phenomenon of deferential behaviour is negligible, or it does happen, but not have much of an effect. I am very open to the possibility that the core theory is wrong - can you shed light on that?
– halferApr 20 '18 at 14:35

2

@halfer Regarding the cultural differences, I don't think I'm not the right person to answer, also for cultural reasons, since I'm from Sweden and we're culturally very informal (because of a certain language reform in Sweden in the 1960s), quite the opposite of what you describe here.
– LundinApr 20 '18 at 14:57

4

OK, no problem. Nevertheless, as an English speaker, your view is valuable. In the comments under the question here, Duplode says he/she is from Brazil, and is entirely unaffected by begging and pleading (it is mentally ignored). For me, as a British person, I find it greatly irritating, either because the other person is rendering themselves as pathetic unnecessarily, or I am concerned the other person is being emotionally manipulative by making crass appeals to kindness. Understanding how this sort of thing is received by culture is relevant (and fascinating).
– halferApr 20 '18 at 15:04

3

As @halfer says, your cultural point of view is interesting too. It is plausible that these cultural differences cut both ways, not just with respect to what we bring as question/answer authors but also, on a larger scale, to the specific cultural environment that has shaped Stack Overflow. While the favoured communication styles here weren't arbitrarily chosen, they aren't a depersonalised "view from nowhere" either.
– duplodeApr 20 '18 at 15:56

2

By the way: the obvious way of saying "I have a question" in Portuguese is "Eu tenho uma dúvida". An overly literal translation of that back to English gives "I have a doubt", making it an easy to understand mistake from this point of view.
– duplodeApr 20 '18 at 16:02

It is possible the type of questions under discussion already are stated overly confident, abrupt, and matter-of-fact ... according to their OP's cultural background. So, then advise what? "More confidence! More!"?
– usr2564301Apr 22 '18 at 23:40

@usr2564301: agreed, and I take the view that merely wanting people to behave differently (e.g. by saying so on Meta) is not going to have much of an effect. In the past we've urged more Be Nice (not a bad thing in itself) but I am not sure what that actually achieved. I think I am looking for UI changes, new docs, new educational tools, etc (while not wishing to limit the scope of answers to those things).
– halferApr 23 '18 at 11:34

might actually be a valuable piece of information. You may realize that the person asking the question may not know about some of the rather obvious ways of obtaining the answer to the problem.

You may e.g. realize that while the answer to a question is already given somewhere, a "newbee" would not be able to find this answer. Or to understand it. It can make the difference between downvoting for no research shown or leaving a nice comment about the documentation using italic font for particular methods in use or such things. When closing a question as duplicate I also found myself leaving a comment explaining in how far this is a duplicate more often in cases where I realized the questioner couldn't have found this duplicate from where they started.

More generally, the very same question is really a different one being asked by some expert compared to some inexperienced person. Consider the question "Why does water change its color in the evening?"; imagine this being asked by a child and by a physics professor. It may in both cases be a valid question - with no research shown, because the child doesn't know what to ask previously to that to acquire more insight necessary to solve this, and the physics professor may simply assume that you know in how far this has, despite everything being written about it already, not an obvious solution. If anything, you still need to condemn the professor for asking a bad question, not the kid.

So maybe this particular phrase does not actually qualify at all for being removed.

Similarly,

I am stuck for days
I have googled and read every single post on stackoverflow

assuming that those statements are actually true (which, agreed, is often not the case), they could be translated into "I have an XY problem, but I don't know how to phrase X, so I present Y here in hope someone can point me to X". Those are then also valid extra information to consider when writing an answer or asking for clarifications in a comment.

Possible actions to take:

I'm a big fan of some interactive guide to asking questions. Hence If the user types in any of the meantionned phrases yellow popups could occur to inform them about the consequences.

"I'm new to ... -> "While you may have the wish to tell people about you being new to ..., make sure that this is actually relevant for the question to ask. In most cases what you rather need to inform readers of your question about is what exactly your level of knowledge concerning ... is. State which resources you have used in the past, which tools you are aware of and confident in using, which part of the problem you do understand how to solve and guide the reader to the problem by clearly stating what piece of information you lack to solve it yourself."

I am stuck for {days, years, ages}. -> "Be aware that the amount of time you are stuck is not relevant to the problem. Instead tell the readers of your question what you have attempted to solve the problem and which resources you have been using."

I have googled... -> "Make sure not to forget telling the reader about the result of your searches and readings. Also link to relevant resources and questions that have not helped you and state in how far they don't solve your problem."

I agree with your first part (and there was a similar discussion in the comments): declarations of being a beginner to something can be useful. I think this has been covered by whole MSO posts just on that one subject, in fact. I don't generally remove them if they stand on their own, but I sometimes still do if I think they are primarily intended to contribute to a nagging or pleading tone.
– halferApr 22 '18 at 18:29

Nevertheless, the point of my question was to try to determine if Meta readers felt that the projection of begging and pleading, or the interpretation of begging and pleading, (a) might be common phenomena, (b) might be a cause of the sometimes snarky or brusque tone on the main site, and (c) might be worth addressing either from a writer or reader perspective. Anything you can offer on that (including your own experience of ingratiating language in the context of your own cultural lenses) would be most valuable.
– halferApr 22 '18 at 18:38

1

My completely subjective feeling is that the thee meantionned phrases here would be used 50% for "begging" and 50% as a misguided attempt to express the actual inability to find a solution. (a) Yes (b) I cannot evaluate this without making too many assumptions (c) Definitely, I might extend my answer with some possible actions to take in a bit.
– ImportanceOfBeingErnestApr 22 '18 at 18:56

1

I like your text suggestions for the "Question Clippy"! I have a completely unproven theory that this idea, done in cautious stages, would radically change how quickly new users understand our desire for quality and brevity.
– halferApr 26 '18 at 12:34

1

@halfer and Ernest: If Stack Overflow is a game, Question Clippy would be the friendly NPC that keeps you company through the tutorial stage. I like the way this is heading.
– duplodeApr 28 '18 at 7:55

This post is exactly how I feel on SO. Many times I really have been working on something for days, googling away, and I just don't understand it. In fact in my post history you can see this when I was working on my iOS app. There are a few different asks of the same question, and one of the responders called me out on it, to which I point blankly replied "because none of the answers have made sense, so I'm asking in different ways to find one that does."
– DJFriarJan 20 '19 at 7:01

I will often include that I'm working on my first app (which I am) specifically to get an answer that either includes some extra comments or references something else to help me place it in context.
– DJFriarJan 20 '19 at 7:02

As a new poster on Stack Overflow [meta]: I do not fear the asking. I rather fear the anger towards the posted question. If you have a high ranking, you're automatically regarded as asking only the necessary. If you have only a few posts, your question is surely poorly researched and gets downvoted in seconds.

//e1: This is not meant as a general statement concerning every single poster, but it was rather thought of as a starting point in the theory as why one might have a (psychological) difficulty asking a question. It is not to be regarded as a 'verdict'.

//e2: @halfer: I constrained myself to the actual question, not the other theories stated thereupon.

I don't want to discuss the voting system in detail, since that's not the focus of my question. Nevertheless, in the same way as I think there is a psychological power differential that stems from deferential language, I do think that large differences of reputation levels between two posters can have an effect of the communication between them. Anyone with a moderately high rep does not like to think of themselves as exalted, or that they are at risk of looking poorly upon new users by virtue of their perceived wealth, but I don't doubt the phenomenon can happen.
– halferApr 20 '18 at 10:28

5

However, I think your answer contains some wrong statements - it sounds like you are saying that new users cannot possibly ask a good question, or that old users do not ask bad ones. Both can happen, in fact. The perception of quality may be affected by inaccurate biases (e.g. the rep of the poster) but we should not throw out a desire for quality as a result.
– halferApr 20 '18 at 10:32

(This is a bit off-topic anyway. If you can edit your answer to more fully answer any part of the question, please do!)
– halferApr 20 '18 at 10:33

3

What is the difference, in practice, between fearing to ask a question and fearing the responses to a question? If one fears the responses prior to asking, does that not make it likely that new users would modify the question to request kindness or pity (consciously or otherwise)? And, if such requests are counterproductive because they elicit resentment, what can we do about it (on either the asker or the helper side)?
– halferApr 20 '18 at 11:30

3

I see an experiment here, @halfer ... provide some experienced users with questions from new members and from veterans. But don't tell them who the askers were. See if the voting is significantly different from a test group that does see asker rep.
– S.L. Barth - Reinstate MonicaApr 20 '18 at 11:34

1

That's be a great experiment @S.L.Barth, I'd like to see that!
– halferApr 20 '18 at 11:42

9

@S.L.Barth Speaking as somebody who sometimes very deliberately asks short questions with no code and no error message (because I am comfortable that the question is answerable and useful in its current form and that any additions I could make would just be noise), I'd be very interested in the results of that experiment. I wonder if a low-rep user would get away with posting, say, stackoverflow.com/q/42983697/1709587 or stackoverflow.com/q/41901795/1709587, or whether their question would get closed and they'd get clobbered with downvotes.
– Mark AmeryApr 20 '18 at 14:06

I spy the beginnings of a new Meta question, @MarkAmery, and I'd be most interested to read a discussion on that theme. I agree that a new user might have a hard time posting those questions, and I hope that it is just they are well formatted, correctly cased and well linked/referenced that means they did not get a roasting. (If you have a new short question, perhaps you could ask that from a separate account, for Science?)
– halferApr 20 '18 at 14:40

@halfer I suppose the rigorous way to do Science on the problem would be to, whenever I want to ask a question over the next few months, write my question first and then, at the moment of posting, randomly select whether to post it with my own account or that of a newly-created 1 rep user. (Indeed, there's plenty more interesting insight we could potentially gain using this methodology of randomly attributing prewritten questions to different accounts, if done on a large enough scale - e.g. we could gain robust information about whether voters are prejudiced by gender or race.)
– Mark AmeryApr 20 '18 at 14:56

@MarkAmery Given that I have 0 domain knowledge on either of those two questions; I suspect that the first would be OK. The second at first glance reads as over-broad (but I have no idea what a generator is).
– BradleyDotNETApr 20 '18 at 14:57

Excellent ideas @Mark. Indeed, S.L.Barth suggests something similar above. I had wondered in the past if we could have an opt-in mode to randomly change our name/avatar to be of a particular gender or nationality, in order to let SO measure this sort of thing. However, I expect SO would want to be careful - it might be trivially easy to prove that people are subconsciously racist, for example, and we know what sort of can of worms can be opened with this sort of thing!
– halferApr 20 '18 at 15:00

1

@halfer I'm pretty squarely on socially conservative / anti-SJ / antifeminist side of the political spectrum, but all else being equal I'd still rather open the can of worms. I'd far rather get an accurate model of how the world actually works and then argue the politics from there than try to avoid producing that knowledge just in case it turns out to contain some inconvenient truths that my political enemies decide to use to their advantage.
– Mark AmeryApr 20 '18 at 15:07

@Mark: fair enough. I'm on the other side of the fence politically, but agree with you on the science 100%. I get frustrated when policy or politics is driven by anything other than data (and both our left/right parties here in the UK have cheerfully ignored science, especially if they feared a moral panic from the tabloids).
– halferApr 20 '18 at 15:09

1

Relevant to this discussion: the question discussed in this meta quickly got 5 downvotes before the meta effect took over. It is a good question. I believe the initial viewers were looking at poster's rep.
– jppApr 22 '18 at 3:11

1

@MarkAmery: re: what I'd think if a low-rep user had posted Create generator that yields coroutine results as the coroutines finish: Looks like a gimme-the-code question. Well-formulated and fairly clear on what you actually want, but still no attempt or explanation of what problem you had just writing it yourself. However, I'd say the same thing about it even considering who posted it, if you hadn't posted a self-answer at the same time as the question. So not a good example for your "experiment".
– Peter CordesNov 9 '18 at 9:39

I agree with unutbu and ImportanceOfBeingErnest but I don't have sufficient reputation to comment or upvote them, hence my answer. Is it ironic that I provide that qualification? Newer users are constantly reminded of their new status by the hierarchy of badges/reputation points which allow or prevent certain participation. I understand why they exist and do support them, but the constant reminder may be a contributer to what is described in OP's question.

Re. unutbu: I had my first question heavily edited and I learnt from it. There are so many rules/guidelines that I was not able to process them all when I posted my first question but through the example I was shown, I learnt. My personal experience aside, modelling correct behaviour is a most effective tool and definitely applies in this situation.

Re. ImportanceOfBeingErnest: I would also write

"I'm new to this"

in a question, but not as some type of grovelling. My aim would be to advise any prospective helpers that I would appreciate a response given in the simplest of terms since a complicated and in-depth response may be beyond my current level of understanding.

Fully granted: having too many of these apologetic statements is distracting, annoying, and counterproductive. However, it's very simple to skim over a leading or trailing occurrence and continue on, ignoring them. It sounds like the inability to do this, as you're describing it (excluding the cases where a question so littered with this language that it is incoherent), is a pretty serious superiority complex of the reader, likely due to self-conscious insecurities about their own inadequacies outside of the realm of the topic and this setting. This is a problem of the reader, not the writer.

I have a theory that new users are cautious askers at the best of
times, when asking a question on Reddit and the like. On Stack
Overflow, our reputation precedes us: they've heard we're a grumpy
bunch of elitists, or that our writing and formatting requirements
have gotten too onerous, or that they're going to be tarred and
feathered for whatever terrible question they wish to ask.

As a result, the question author tries to head this off at the pass,
and ends up adding so much nervous boilerplate that their question
gets an even worse reception. It is added to placate the audience, and
ends up annoying the audience instead.

I think you're absolutely right and the answer is right there; we have to improve the reputation. They haven't just "heard" it, they've experienced it. To do that we have to understand how the reputation has formed. The solution is for the community to just stop being so, or seeming so, hyper-critical and/or arrogant, causing (new) users to come in with their tails between their legs, afraid that one false keystroke is going to result in them being chastised and not getting any help.

There are poorly worded but subject-wise great questions that are downvoted & closed on Stack Overflow that are still the top hit on Google and have an excellent, very upvoted answer from someone who overlooked the poor wording and helped. I come across these fairly often. Now how often are we discarding important questions like this before it is understood or answered and leaving the asker with a poor impression of us and without help and leaving the site without an important addition that just needs an edit?

I think it is when readers get so caught up in curating the perfect question before it has even been answered that users are offended or turned off from the site. Help first, then curate. If help first means asking for clarification or directing to the "asking a good question" page, do it politely. If it means editing the question, I don't think that tends to offend anyone much, but be very careful about it when editing before an accepted answer because a small change in wording can be a huge change in the intended meaning. Regardless of the specific tactics, to change the reputation, I feel the first goal needs be to help the asker solve their problem and perfect the Q&A after. And anyone with the inability to remain focused on that goal because of their own perceived self-importance, should try to remember: a new user may be an expert too. Everyone needs help sometimes.

Look at one of the community's most revered members: Jon Skeet. I've never once detected arrogance from him. He's always helpful and result-oriented, and that's why everyone loves him. WWJSD?
– xr280xrJan 18 '19 at 19:56

5

So if everybody agrees, you are proved right. If users disagree, you are proved right. Great strategy.
– yiviJan 18 '19 at 20:00

1

So politeness is supposed to take precedence over properly curating the site, I take it? Gonna have to disagree with you on that one. We don't have to be rude, but quality is far more important than user's feelings.
– fbueckertJan 18 '19 at 20:01

@fbueckert No. I agree with you. Curating the site is important and that is what I meant by "a problem that can't be ignored".
– xr280xrJan 18 '19 at 20:03

4

Well, I'd recommend clarifying that, because as it stands, this reads like a mini-rant on the state of curation, and conflates it with being a jerk. Additionally, when performing said curation, it shouldn't be something you need to address with the asker at all; just do it, and move on. There's rarely a good outcome to trying to educate new users to the intricacies of the site.
– fbueckertJan 18 '19 at 20:05

I'm not sure you've really changed the gist of your answer. It still conflates curation with being a jerk, and seems to point to a misunderstanding you may have with curation in general. That might be worth a discussion elsewhere, but here, I don't think you've the right idea.
– fbueckertJan 18 '19 at 20:17

2

More downvotes and quicker deletion of garbage posts would result in garbage posts (and therefore downvoted posts) being less visible, thus improving the way the site might be perceived... Rather than someone coming in from google to a garbage post that's still lingering around with a few downvotes.
– Kevin BJan 18 '19 at 20:20

@fbueckert OP identified the reputation in his question: grumpy elitists who will tar and feather you. I'm paraphrasing it in the word "jerk". And I think people are taking it personally and down voting because they feel attacked when I'm offering a source of that reputation that I have witnessed. Critical & rude comments on questions over something that can be easily ignored, inferred, or like you said, silently edited, votes to close or closing without giving someone in need of help a chance to clarify...these help earn that reputation and what I am calling "hyper-critical and/or arrogant".
– xr280xrJan 18 '19 at 20:39

3

And that's why I think you misunderstand the point of curation. You yourself said that curation is more important than user's feelings, but you still think downvoting, closing (or even editing!) questions without telling the user anything is arrogant or hyper-critical. There won't be any constructive discussion to have; you won't understand, and we're just going to talk past each other.
– fbueckertJan 18 '19 at 20:42

@fb Agree site quality is important. Agree we don't have to be rude. Disagree quality is more important than users feelings. Disagree with the notion they are mutually exclusive. Users' feelings are very important as is evident by the existence of this question. Users' feelings are what control the reputation and continued participation on the site. When feelings are hurt/offended, things thereafter become counterproductive. So curation needs to stop taking priority over user feelings via etiquette and politeness. Luckily both can exist.Some cases I think delayed curation is all that is needed
– xr280xrJan 18 '19 at 21:03

2

Gonna have to disagree with you on feelings controlling the site's reputation. Yes, we are seen as grumpy and unfriendly, but also the most expert programming community. That's entirely due to our approach to curation. The vast majority of perceived unfriendliness is mismatched expectations from new users. They see curation as hostile, as it hinders their goal. We're not a help desk, and treating us as one just leads to frustration. Curation ensures our library of knowledge is, and stays at, a high quality repository. That matters far more.
– fbueckertJan 18 '19 at 21:08

Thanks for replying to my link from the main site. I appreciate also that you removed the chatty material from your own question - and I hope that my post illuminates why it might be counter-productive. I get the impression that you agree that the phenomenon of "begging upwards" exists, and why seasoned readers might find it irritating: ingratiation and pleading is a form of social manipulation, and being the recipient of frequent manipulating (begging) is tiring (especially for volunteers).
– halferJan 19 '19 at 21:39

1

However, part of your answer is that you want to tell seasoned readers they have a superiority complex, and that they should just be nicer. Aside from asking for behaviour change from people you're insulting - which is probably not going to work out well anyway - how do you propose to achieve this increase in niceness? That is why this my Meta question is far more difficult than it sounds - engineering changes in culture or behaviour is a very hard problem to solve.
– halferJan 19 '19 at 21:42